Star Trek: The Original Series (VHS)
Star Trek: The Original Series has been released on VHS in multiple countries since the technology was developed. US releases In early 1980, directly pursuant the premiere of , Paramount Home Entertainment (then known as Paramount Home Video) released ten selected episodes on the new VHS and Betamax home media formats in the United States, in five volumes of two episodes each as part of their "Television Classics" collection: / , / , / , / , and / . http://www.closinglogos.com/page/Paramount+Home+Media+Distribution http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/early-80s-tos-vhs-tapes.143530/page-5 A limited release priced at US$79.99 each, it was intended as an appetizer for the in October later released The Motion Picture videotape formats, and together they are as such the earliest known official (thereby discounting any and all possible previous and illegal so-called " s", the Original Series "blooper reels" being a prime example, and including the prior Super 8 releases) Star Trek releases in either format, or in any home media format for that matter. A bit puzzling was, that unlike its Motion Picture releases, Paramount did not endow the Original Series releases with catalog numbers or rating indicators. http://tosbldvhs.blogspot.nl/2014/08/the-rental-tapes.html It were these tapes that very shortly thereafter turned up as the first Star Trek productions in the VHS/Betamax rental circuit. In mid-1979, Paramount Home Video hammered out a deal with photo developer/video rental outlet to release 36 titles of their backlog catalog on the new home media formats for the rental circuit, who started to do so from December 1979 onward, thereby becoming one of the very first such rental companies. http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/sreply/1167895/The-Lucifer-Complex-1978#.VzXmW-RrFv0 From March 1980 onward, Paramount gradually expanded the original agreement to 131 titles, and it was only after that occasion that all six available Star Trek videotape titles were added to Fotomat's rental catalog. Fotomat had the Paramount introductory logos, disclaimers and credits on the rental tapes, the ones habitually seen prior to the feature presentation, replaced with their own. http://www.closinglogos.com/page/Fotomat+Video The tapes were additionally packaged in simple die-cut silver cases with black markings and the Fotomat logo on the case. The labels were black with white text. At the time a tape could be either be rented for US$12, or, at a later point in time – for those customers who had missed out on the initial chance to acquire the Paramount tapes – bought for a price in the US$40-$70 range, both rather steep for that era. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/FotomatVideo Ever since, Star Trek has been a staple in the rental circuit, until VHS tapes were phased out of existence in the early-to-mid 2000s, preceded previously by their Betamax counterparts over a decade earlier. A special one-off release of (Paramount Gateway Video VHS 60040) occurred in 1982 to tie in with the premiere of . Starting in February 1985, the complete series was finally released in groups of ten over the course of the second half of the 1980s. Both tape formats were released in near simultaneous conjuncture with the US , sharing similarly designed "transporter platform" cover art, though it should be noted that the tapes were one episode per tape releases as opposed to the two episodes per disc LaserDiscs, they therefore released in groups of five. http://tosbldvhs.blogspot.nl/2014/08/1985-wide-release-ld-vhs-betamax.html Included were both versions of , first with a hybrid of Gene Roddenberry's work print version and footage from "The Menagerie", along with an introduction by Roddenberry produced especially for the VHS release in 1986, and the "All-Color Collector's Edition" of the episode in 1991. The workprint version, complete with Roddenberry intro is available on Volume 40 of the original DVD releases and the TOS Season 3 DVD set. The full color version was also released in 1995 on a tape by Paramount with , as part of a four-tape boxed set featuring the pilots for the first four series. Paramount reissued the VHS tapes in with new packaging and collectible SkyBox International trading cards for each episode. CBS Video Library/Columbia House also issued tapes of the series in 1986, featuring two episodes per tape. For most of the run of the library releases, the introductory volume was and . Paramount fully phased out releases of the series on VHS by the end of the 1990s-early 2000s. UK releases Specific episodes of The Original Series were first released by CIC-Arena Video in the early 1980s. The series in its entirety was released twice in the UK by CIC Video - a two-episode-per-tape release from - , and a three-episode-per-tape release from - . With the exception of a handful early tape releases by Mountain Video and EVC, typically for the rental outlet market, the UK, as had indeed the rest of Western Europe, adhered to the (at least) two episodes per tape format, as opposed to the US where the one episode per tape format was adhered to for all Star Trek television series for the better part of two decades. For American customers this became a source of chagrin when they became aware of the market discrimination, courtesy the advent of the internet in the early to mid-1990s, especially since American tape prices were at the time on par with their European counterparts. The predominantly one episode per tape releases from Mountain Video and EVC were the earliest known VHS/Betamax releases outside the US. However, lack of any mention of the legal owner of Star Trek, Paramount Pictures (the aforementioned Fotomat, when it started to disseminate the Star Trek tapes, had Paramount emphatically stated as legal owner on its casings and tapes), as well as the fact that the cover art had all the appearances of being "fan-produced", the ones from EVC in particular, seemed to indicate that legalities surrounding copyright and licensing issues were not quite hammered out according to the rule book. This impression is further reinforced by the fact that there were titles included, Paramount itself had not selected for official release in the US, but there was a large overlap with titles as released the previous decade by Canterbury Films on Super 8, which were unlicensed. Canterbury Films had made use of a contemporary loophole in the then-applicable copyright laws when it discovered that some episodes of the Star Trek television show did not contain a copyright in the credits and released duplicates to collectors, and a similar scenario is conceivable for the earliest British releases. CIC Video, on the other hand, was co-owned by Paramount. Original complete release Release dates for the first original twenty-one releases are not known. But since these releases are based on the 1985 one episode per tape US release, as is indicated by the similar cover art, it is fair to assume that releases started sometimes thereafter, considering that foreign dissemination of American produced home media formats habitually lagged behind US distribution at the time for legal as well as practical reasons, translation being the most obvious reason in the latter case. Dates in italics are approximations based on release frequency, where no exact date is available. UK products were normally released on a Monday. These CIC Video UK releases served from 1988 onward as the basis for not only the Original Series, but all subsequent Star Trek tape releases for the rest of Europe, with local branches of CIC Video responsible for either subtitling or dubbing in the language of the target market, as well as optionally adapting cover art to local tastes. The video casing cover art for the Netherlands and Flanders for example, were nearly indistinguishable from their UK counterparts, save for the text imprint language of the episode summaries and disclaimers on the back cover art, whereas German or Italian releases featured radically redesigned cover art. The original CIC Video release was continuous, and did not separate out seasons. Consequently, the volume containing the final episode of a season will also have the first episode of the next season. The original releases were deleted on . Re-release Each episode in the series features an introduction by either James Doohan, George Takei, or Walter Koenig. With the exception of the below-mentioned DVD/magazine partwork publication, these specially-produced introductions have not been included in any of the later home media formats and are therefore exclusive for this edition. This 1996 three episodes per tape edition – a format hitherto unheard of for the American home market – made use of new transfers of color corrected and cleaned-up footage, at the time called "digitally mastering", originally done four years earlier for the Japanese LaserDisc editions Star Trek: Log 1 - Log 3. Released at the beginning of the DVD age this edition only saw a limited production run, in anticipation of the first DVD release of the Original Series. Picture quality wise, it has been the best edition of the Original Series ever to be released on VHS, actually even outperforming the initial DVD releases of the Original Series, as explained below. A relatively uncommon one, this particular release has seen at least one international variant. In the Netherlands and Flanders the (sub-titled) series was offered for a limited time in 1997 as three, complete season collector's box set editions. This entailed that the tapes were packaged in carton slipcases with otherwise unaltered cover art, they themselves collected in a box on a per season basis. The season two box set incorporated as an extra, a copy of William Shatner's Star Trek Memories, whereas the season three box contained copies of Star Trek: 30 Years and Beyond and From Here to Infinity: The Ultimate Voyage – the 1994 space documentary presented by Patrick Stewart – as extra bonus. The UK tapes were packaged in the standard plastic VHS snap cases. In the US, this version has never seen the light of day, neither in format nor in its use of the "remastered" transfers. US customers had to wait until the 2007 TOS-R Season 1 HD DVD release to enjoy for themselves improved picture quality, previous DVD releases – for all territories – having only made use of the worn-out original masters, the same ones they had already used for their VHS releases. In the UK itself the re-release edition served as the basis for the 2007-2008 Star Trek: The Original Series - The Collector's Edition DVD/magazine partwork publication of GE Fabbri. Box sets, collections, and other releases Footnotes Category:VHS releases